This is primarily due to feature creep. Look at MS Office and Windows for prime examples. Instead of, say, conducting a statistical survey to see what features most people use the most, and then having everything else as "modules" (like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird extensions), MS just includes everything.
Same goes with hardware. Keyboards are a good example. It took me awhile to find the Keytronic keyboard that I use at home right now. It's simple, sturdy, and attractive in a minimalist kind of way. I had to wade through dozens of competitors who had "Internet keys", "multimedia buttons", and on and on. Prices stay the same because capitalism makes vendors want to differentiate their product. The only way most companies can think of to do this is to add features. Simplicity and elegance goes away, and technical support nightmares increase.
We've all heard about Rwanda, the civil war in Congo/Zaire, and the like. Is there any way that wireless networking + FOSS programs (e.g. weblogging tools) could be used to transmit live reports of need for aid, etc.? Throwing GPS into the mix couldn't hurt either. I wonder if wireless is cheap enough for this purpose yet, though.
I hate seeing all the crossbranding on AOL/TW sites when all I want to see is the content. Specialized sites have always given me faster, cleaner, and more detailed news and information. For example, recently I needed to know an obscure fact about the Mozilla/Firefox browsers in a hurry. With Google I had to dig a big, but plugging the same search terms into mozillazine.org forums yielded the answer immediately.
Cool CSS version 3 features coming up
on
Core CSS (2nd ed.)
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· Score: 3, Informative
The CSS3 Color Module includes an alpha value which can apply to all elements! I wonder how long it'll take browsers to implement it, though.
I suppose it's nice that the fees are reduced for smaller entities. But can individuals or small organizations actually enforce copyright online? I mean, most people don't have the resources to fund drawn out or chronic lawsuits. Is a cease-and-desist letter powerful enough?
All of this is neat, but if we're talking about console gaming systems, a standard television resolution isn't going to cut it. Remember WebTV and how crappy websites looked, since they were designed for screens with 800x600, 1024x768, or even greater resolutions? HDTV is nice, and supposedly required by the FCC pretty soon. But when is the average console consumer going to be able to afford it?
This is more of a technical question than a business one, but what exactly is the "choke point" in the server side of a Google search? Sure, those 10,000+ machines have no problem obliterating even complex searches. But surely there must be "gateway" type machines which route the searches. How does Google prevent these from being overloaded? (Or is that a trade secret?)
The forms tend to have lots of misreads due to stray marks on the paper.
How about a "stencils" approach? That is, have two sheets of paper. The first is the actual paper upon which marks are placed and which is read by the optical device. The second is an overlay sheet with holes in it, where the "bubbles" appear, so that any stray marks will simply not be recorded physically. This could be transparent to the user--the machine could strip off the overlay sheet as part of the process of reading the ballot.
Assuming there is some good way of making all of these ballot boxes talk to a central computer, it sounds like the best answer to me.
Scantron machines already have a statistics function, from what I've heard (I've never been able to actually fool with one, being a mere student.) Just add up the totals from each machine and you've got your winners. The beauty of the Scantron tactic is that human beings can recount by hand if necessary, something which doesn't apply to Diebold/etc.
Maybe all of these people who want to shove electronic voting on us should consider that something very similar to an automated paper voting system--Scantron sheets and readers--works pretty well in the enormous educational system. It has proven its ability to scale and be relatively free of cheating, at least at the schools I attended.:-)
I can see how people are justified in demanding human rights like clean water or civil rights like free speech. But is bandwidth really something that humans need to the degree that it should be a "right"? And if so, who's going to pay for it all?
I'm not terribly familiar with Wi-Fi yet, but won't ubiquitous, anonymous, free Internet access lead to more problems with trolls, harassment, and other forms of web and email garbage? I know Wi-Fi can be locked down, e.g. my university requires that you register your NIC with the campus before obtaining access. But don't all these war driving/flying expeditions show that many if not most Wi-Fi is not yet secure?
...in addition to porting development frameworks is lend guidance on the user interface front. Maybe create a base of minimum usability standards to which window managers, toolkits, distribution installation screens, etc. could refer. Not just the lack of programs, but the lack of consistent program interfaces (e.g. see the recent article on Slashdot about GIMP contrasted with Photoshop) is another thing holding Linux back from the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
This is primarily due to feature creep. Look at MS Office and Windows for prime examples. Instead of, say, conducting a statistical survey to see what features most people use the most, and then having everything else as "modules" (like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird extensions), MS just includes everything.
Same goes with hardware. Keyboards are a good example. It took me awhile to find the Keytronic keyboard that I use at home right now. It's simple, sturdy, and attractive in a minimalist kind of way. I had to wade through dozens of competitors who had "Internet keys", "multimedia buttons", and on and on. Prices stay the same because capitalism makes vendors want to differentiate their product. The only way most companies can think of to do this is to add features. Simplicity and elegance goes away, and technical support nightmares increase.
A very useful link...
Caffeine Content of Beverages
Anyone know the specifications of the 20 servers they were using? 100,000 messages isn't that much. Five day delays? Did I read that right?
We've all heard about Rwanda, the civil war in Congo/Zaire, and the like. Is there any way that wireless networking + FOSS programs (e.g. weblogging tools) could be used to transmit live reports of need for aid, etc.? Throwing GPS into the mix couldn't hurt either. I wonder if wireless is cheap enough for this purpose yet, though.
I hate seeing all the crossbranding on AOL/TW sites when all I want to see is the content. Specialized sites have always given me faster, cleaner, and more detailed news and information. For example, recently I needed to know an obscure fact about the Mozilla/Firefox browsers in a hurry. With Google I had to dig a big, but plugging the same search terms into mozillazine.org forums yielded the answer immediately.
The CSS3 Color Module includes an alpha value which can apply to all elements! I wonder how long it'll take browsers to implement it, though.
I suppose it's nice that the fees are reduced for smaller entities. But can individuals or small organizations actually enforce copyright online? I mean, most people don't have the resources to fund drawn out or chronic lawsuits. Is a cease-and-desist letter powerful enough?
All of this is neat, but if we're talking about console gaming systems, a standard television resolution isn't going to cut it. Remember WebTV and how crappy websites looked, since they were designed for screens with 800x600, 1024x768, or even greater resolutions? HDTV is nice, and supposedly required by the FCC pretty soon. But when is the average console consumer going to be able to afford it?
This is more of a technical question than a business one, but what exactly is the "choke point" in the server side of a Google search? Sure, those 10,000+ machines have no problem obliterating even complex searches. But surely there must be "gateway" type machines which route the searches. How does Google prevent these from being overloaded? (Or is that a trade secret?)
The forms tend to have lots of misreads due to stray marks on the paper.
How about a "stencils" approach? That is, have two sheets of paper. The first is the actual paper upon which marks are placed and which is read by the optical device. The second is an overlay sheet with holes in it, where the "bubbles" appear, so that any stray marks will simply not be recorded physically. This could be transparent to the user--the machine could strip off the overlay sheet as part of the process of reading the ballot.
Assuming there is some good way of making all of these ballot boxes talk to a central computer, it sounds like the best answer to me. Scantron machines already have a statistics function, from what I've heard (I've never been able to actually fool with one, being a mere student.) Just add up the totals from each machine and you've got your winners. The beauty of the Scantron tactic is that human beings can recount by hand if necessary, something which doesn't apply to Diebold/etc.
Maybe all of these people who want to shove electronic voting on us should consider that something very similar to an automated paper voting system--Scantron sheets and readers--works pretty well in the enormous educational system. It has proven its ability to scale and be relatively free of cheating, at least at the schools I attended. :-)
I can see how people are justified in demanding human rights like clean water or civil rights like free speech. But is bandwidth really something that humans need to the degree that it should be a "right"? And if so, who's going to pay for it all?
I'm not terribly familiar with Wi-Fi yet, but won't ubiquitous, anonymous, free Internet access lead to more problems with trolls, harassment, and other forms of web and email garbage? I know Wi-Fi can be locked down, e.g. my university requires that you register your NIC with the campus before obtaining access. But don't all these war driving/flying expeditions show that many if not most Wi-Fi is not yet secure?
...in addition to porting development frameworks is lend guidance on the user interface front. Maybe create a base of minimum usability standards to which window managers, toolkits, distribution installation screens, etc. could refer. Not just the lack of programs, but the lack of consistent program interfaces (e.g. see the recent article on Slashdot about GIMP contrasted with Photoshop) is another thing holding Linux back from the desktop.