Microsoft's patents on the start bar configuration, logos and other interface technology have made it very difficult to develop competitive operating systems, or even for students to develop operating systems of their own.
Millions of people run SETI@home every day, despite the power cost. I currently run three computers, two of which reboot once a week, and a laptop which I reboot once a night. I run seti on all of them and only turn it off when I need the best system performance for benchmarks or games. If there was an option for me to configure my software, so that I made a profit off seti, it would do nothing pay out. In order to target new consumers/users, the payout would have to be significant to bring in users and cover costs, but low enough not to bankrupt companies. I believe that this is all feasible and will be happening in the near future.
With the average home computer advancing to higher levels, how long will it be until you can rent out your computer? I can imagine that it would be extreemly profitable to credit say $1.50 per hour of time running in the background of a program. Actually, paying for time is bad, paying for packets is better. Now I am not a trained professional in any way or form (I'll be a senior in HS next year) but I believe that paying people to compute should be cheaper then doing your own processing - and alot faster.
Most office computers in offices that I have been working in have relativly decent power and word processing doesn't take up much of their resources. Offices could make extra cash by running software in the backgrounds on their computers, if not during the day, then at night or after hours. Hrm, interesting possibilities:-)
For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $61 million, or $.16 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $19 million, or $.05 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $2.014 billion, up 30 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Apple has done very well setting themselves up in several markets. First off, apple has the iPod, which brings in revenue, as well as iTunes, another device to bring in money. But Mac's best move was to jump into education, and art. Apple markets its products aggressively to schools, and from my experience with high school computer labs, as well as colleges in my area, most are Mac based. Apple has pushed "laptop schools" and has been the driving power behind them. Many universities are clustering powermacs to create low cost super computers.
The second market is art. When it comes to digital photography, the number one computer I hear reccomended is the iMac. Digital Photography is not a huge market but it is a growing one, combine that with Mac's iLife suite, iMovie and final cut pro.
iTunes, the iPod, marketing to education and towards the arts are in my opinion, a solid footing that despite "low earnings" will keep Mac around for some time.
Hopefully the new iMacs will be able to offer a less expensive alternative to the current models. I have been saving for a decent mac for some time (I'm a pc user, but want a mac for digital photography.) The inclusion of the monitor in traditional iMacs will drop the price considerably but how much is the question. Hopefully it won't be a long wait until the G5 laptops come out so I can get a mobile G5. Will the new G5 powered iMacs drive the price down on the current G5 models, or will they simply be a lower cost alternative? And what effect will this have?:-)
Your TiVo does not do the one thing that this box does: receive and record HDTV (unless you spent about $1000 for an HD DirecTivo).
No, I just have regular TiVo, however when presented with the option in the article, or a HD DirecTivo I would easilly pick the Tivo simply because I don't want to buy a G5.
Google Vs. Microsoft
Google set out to create a product (their search page) that was easy to use, and would do what everyone would like to do. - Microsoft set out to make money, and creates relatively user friendly software. Who has a better business model? Google has yet to go public so we aren't sure who will make more money in the long run, and they both offer different services, but other then that I think the comparison is relatively valid.
If every company set out to make a great product, then the companies that could do that the best would make the most money. Making money is about offering a superior product, not doing the least amount of work to create the cheapest product.
The system requirements, processor drain, and memory usage seem like too high a price to pay, certainly for longterm useage. Maybe I don't understand the benefits, but my Tivo does everything that this does, only better.
Space is an unknown, it is one of the harshest environments to be explored by humans. You'd think we could do a little better...
Nock Nock... Better, Faster, Cheaper doesn't work. We make stupid mistakes which cost a lot of money. As far as I am concerned, everything that NASA does is new, it has never been tested before, so what should NASA do? Test it! Improve it!
Sending a probe to mars without sufficient memory is entirely avoidable, as are mistakes in conversion, metric systems, and a myriad of problems with hubble, from Nicos (100m down the drain because some ice expanded) to the Gyroscopes, to the Mirror has been a failure.
NASA has had many successes but its last two directors have had their flaws (including our current directors blinding obsession with finding life on mars).
Bottom line... NASA needs new management and a new Mission Statement.
Well, it depends:-)
Acording to the United Nations Environment Programme, fourtysix thousand people die every year from natural disasters. Compare that to the more then a million people who die every year in car accidents.
Let me make my point clearer: Oil is the World
The richest man alive made his money on oil.
We go to war over oil.
We shape forign policy over oil. (we give aid to countries who give us oil, over those who don't)
Oil Polutes alot
Cars kill
Some of those are valid, some aren't... its late and I'm tired.
I firmly believe that Gasoline(or more specifically oil) is and will be responsible for more destruction then any other homegrown (as opposed to cosmic phenomenon) force of idea ever.
Comments? I would love to argue this point.
Until recently we have not had a thourough understanding of the effects of radiation on the human body and other organisms. To this day there are very few effective treatments for radiation exposure. Most people still aren't aware that the most destructive carcinogen, (the object that causes the most cancers in the USA) is our good old friend the sun.
During the tests of the atomic weapons the effects, and the amount of radiation released was unknown. So despite the terrible effects of these weapons had, not only on the people we used them on, but on the people we tested them around, it was not intentional that our soldiers were exposed.
*Interesting side note: During WW I women were hired to paint the controlls on the inside of fighter planes. The paint was composed of radium, so that pilots could see the controlls in the dark. The women would like their brushes between painting jobs to keep the tip fine enough for the small writing. When the women died, they had to be buried in lead lined coffins. *
Bush: "Vostok represents a clear and present danger to the United States of America. We must wipe out any forign alien bacteria in Vostok because they may be plotting against us! I call for congress to give me thirty billion dollars to fund operation Infinite Justice^2 so we can launch a crusade an wipe out the Weapons of Microbial Destruction in Vostok!"
"The Personal Emergency Response System that will locate residents throughout the 41-acre complex, including the indoor pool, on a trail through six acres of forest and in 64 duplex and free-standing homes."
Until the power goes out, and the on hand staff must search the entire complex for all the seniors because they haven't prepared for the possibility. The system is great, however the staff needs to be trained to handle a power less situation and to locate the residents quickly.
One of the disadvantages with using a new system like the one described is becoming dependent on it.
Hearing aids have become an exercise in digression. The newer hearing aids are getting smaller and smaller, becoming less and less obtrusive. Combine this with the fact that cell phone companies are striving to reduce the size of their phones (limited only by our fat fingers) and facilitate communications between bluetooth enabled devices. How long will it be until we see bluetooth wireless headsets shaped like hearing aids? (Practically) invisible wireless headsets that connect our ears to our phones.
Bluetooth has certainly made my life easier (my phone connects to my headset connects to my pda which syncs wirelessly to my PC which uses a wireless keyboard n' mouse) and if a hearing aid shaped bluetooth headset comes out then by all means sign me up... After all, as far as I'm concerned it's just a few short years before we begin implanting ourselves with wireless communications "wetware."
With enterprise spiraling down the toilet for the first time in a long time, there might not be a new season of a Star Trek series comming out. Naturally, B&B are scared, so..... they create a new movie to inspire a series. This is all just one big ploy to get a new star trek series back on the air.
However the movie will be terrible: you can't tell a story w/out developing the characters, and B&B aren't good enough to develop characters, and have a plot at the same time.
Toodles...
With google approaching its IPO, I have little doubt that more of google's services (groups directories) and web utilities (google bar / google button) will undergo "improvements." These improvements will certainly change the services and make them more commercial. We have seen gmail, which is, as far as I am concerned, the most commercial implementation of any free e-mail service (advertising based on keywords in e-mail).
Google has brought us a great search engine, and a great set of tools. I am a firm believer in their services and products, despite the commercial implementations. One of google's guiding principals has been "do no evil" and we can only hope that this principal stays the same once google becomes public.
Just my $.02. I will of course continue using google every day.
The issue here is simple: if the current allocation of frequencies is cutting into emergency services, then that needs to be fixed.
The FCC was debating letting Nextel reorganize the 800MHz band in return for their slice. This no doubt pissed off all their competitors who had to pay millions for their GHz freqs.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's patents on the start bar configuration, logos and other interface technology have made it very difficult to develop competitive operating systems, or even for students to develop operating systems of their own.
Millions of people run SETI@home every day, despite the power cost. I currently run three computers, two of which reboot once a week, and a laptop which I reboot once a night. I run seti on all of them and only turn it off when I need the best system performance for benchmarks or games. If there was an option for me to configure my software, so that I made a profit off seti, it would do nothing pay out. In order to target new consumers/users, the payout would have to be significant to bring in users and cover costs, but low enough not to bankrupt companies. I believe that this is all feasible and will be happening in the near future.
With the average home computer advancing to higher levels, how long will it be until you can rent out your computer? I can imagine that it would be extreemly profitable to credit say $1.50 per hour of time running in the background of a program. Actually, paying for time is bad, paying for packets is better. Now I am not a trained professional in any way or form (I'll be a senior in HS next year) but I believe that paying people to compute should be cheaper then doing your own processing - and alot faster.
:-)
Most office computers in offices that I have been working in have relativly decent power and word processing doesn't take up much of their resources. Offices could make extra cash by running software in the backgrounds on their computers, if not during the day, then at night or after hours. Hrm, interesting possibilities
For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $61 million, or $.16 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $19 million, or $.05 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $2.014 billion, up 30 percent from the year-ago quarter. Apple has done very well setting themselves up in several markets. First off, apple has the iPod, which brings in revenue, as well as iTunes, another device to bring in money. But Mac's best move was to jump into education, and art. Apple markets its products aggressively to schools, and from my experience with high school computer labs, as well as colleges in my area, most are Mac based. Apple has pushed "laptop schools" and has been the driving power behind them. Many universities are clustering powermacs to create low cost super computers.
The second market is art. When it comes to digital photography, the number one computer I hear reccomended is the iMac. Digital Photography is not a huge market but it is a growing one, combine that with Mac's iLife suite, iMovie and final cut pro.
iTunes, the iPod, marketing to education and towards the arts are in my opinion, a solid footing that despite "low earnings" will keep Mac around for some time.
Hopefully the new iMacs will be able to offer a less expensive alternative to the current models. I have been saving for a decent mac for some time (I'm a pc user, but want a mac for digital photography.) The inclusion of the monitor in traditional iMacs will drop the price considerably but how much is the question. Hopefully it won't be a long wait until the G5 laptops come out so I can get a mobile G5. Will the new G5 powered iMacs drive the price down on the current G5 models, or will they simply be a lower cost alternative? And what effect will this have? :-)
Your TiVo does not do the one thing that this box does: receive and record HDTV (unless you spent about $1000 for an HD DirecTivo). No, I just have regular TiVo, however when presented with the option in the article, or a HD DirecTivo I would easilly pick the Tivo simply because I don't want to buy a G5.
Google Vs. Microsoft Google set out to create a product (their search page) that was easy to use, and would do what everyone would like to do. - Microsoft set out to make money, and creates relatively user friendly software. Who has a better business model? Google has yet to go public so we aren't sure who will make more money in the long run, and they both offer different services, but other then that I think the comparison is relatively valid.
If every company set out to make a great product, then the companies that could do that the best would make the most money. Making money is about offering a superior product, not doing the least amount of work to create the cheapest product.
The system requirements, processor drain, and memory usage seem like too high a price to pay, certainly for longterm useage. Maybe I don't understand the benefits, but my Tivo does everything that this does, only better.
Space is an unknown, it is one of the harshest environments to be explored by humans. You'd think we could do a little better... Nock Nock... Better, Faster, Cheaper doesn't work. We make stupid mistakes which cost a lot of money. As far as I am concerned, everything that NASA does is new, it has never been tested before, so what should NASA do? Test it! Improve it! Sending a probe to mars without sufficient memory is entirely avoidable, as are mistakes in conversion, metric systems, and a myriad of problems with hubble, from Nicos (100m down the drain because some ice expanded) to the Gyroscopes, to the Mirror has been a failure. NASA has had many successes but its last two directors have had their flaws (including our current directors blinding obsession with finding life on mars). Bottom line... NASA needs new management and a new Mission Statement.
Well, it depends :-)
Acording to the United Nations Environment Programme, fourtysix thousand people die every year from natural disasters. Compare that to the more then a million people who die every year in car accidents.
Let me make my point clearer: Oil is the World
The richest man alive made his money on oil.
We go to war over oil.
We shape forign policy over oil. (we give aid to countries who give us oil, over those who don't)
Oil Polutes alot
Cars kill
Some of those are valid, some aren't... its late and I'm tired.
I firmly believe that Gasoline(or more specifically oil) is and will be responsible for more destruction then any other homegrown (as opposed to cosmic phenomenon) force of idea ever. Comments? I would love to argue this point.
Until recently we have not had a thourough understanding of the effects of radiation on the human body and other organisms. To this day there are very few effective treatments for radiation exposure. Most people still aren't aware that the most destructive carcinogen, (the object that causes the most cancers in the USA) is our good old friend the sun. During the tests of the atomic weapons the effects, and the amount of radiation released was unknown. So despite the terrible effects of these weapons had, not only on the people we used them on, but on the people we tested them around, it was not intentional that our soldiers were exposed. *Interesting side note: During WW I women were hired to paint the controlls on the inside of fighter planes. The paint was composed of radium, so that pilots could see the controlls in the dark. The women would like their brushes between painting jobs to keep the tip fine enough for the small writing. When the women died, they had to be buried in lead lined coffins. *
Bush: "Vostok represents a clear and present danger to the United States of America. We must wipe out any forign alien bacteria in Vostok because they may be plotting against us! I call for congress to give me thirty billion dollars to fund operation Infinite Justice^2 so we can launch a crusade an wipe out the Weapons of Microbial Destruction in Vostok!"
"The Personal Emergency Response System that will locate residents throughout the 41-acre complex, including the indoor pool, on a trail through six acres of forest and in 64 duplex and free-standing homes."
Until the power goes out, and the on hand staff must search the entire complex for all the seniors because they haven't prepared for the possibility. The system is great, however the staff needs to be trained to handle a power less situation and to locate the residents quickly.
One of the disadvantages with using a new system like the one described is becoming dependent on it.
Hearing aids have become an exercise in digression. The newer hearing aids are getting smaller and smaller, becoming less and less obtrusive. Combine this with the fact that cell phone companies are striving to reduce the size of their phones (limited only by our fat fingers) and facilitate communications between bluetooth enabled devices. How long will it be until we see bluetooth wireless headsets shaped like hearing aids? (Practically) invisible wireless headsets that connect our ears to our phones.
Bluetooth has certainly made my life easier (my phone connects to my headset connects to my pda which syncs wirelessly to my PC which uses a wireless keyboard n' mouse) and if a hearing aid shaped bluetooth headset comes out then by all means sign me up... After all, as far as I'm concerned it's just a few short years before we begin implanting ourselves with wireless communications "wetware."
Toodles...
With enterprise spiraling down the toilet for the first time in a long time, there might not be a new season of a Star Trek series comming out. Naturally, B&B are scared, so..... they create a new movie to inspire a series. This is all just one big ploy to get a new star trek series back on the air.
However the movie will be terrible: you can't tell a story w/out developing the characters, and B&B aren't good enough to develop characters, and have a plot at the same time. Toodles...
With google approaching its IPO, I have little doubt that more of google's services (groups directories) and web utilities (google bar / google button) will undergo "improvements." These improvements will certainly change the services and make them more commercial. We have seen gmail, which is, as far as I am concerned, the most commercial implementation of any free e-mail service (advertising based on keywords in e-mail).
Google has brought us a great search engine, and a great set of tools. I am a firm believer in their services and products, despite the commercial implementations. One of google's guiding principals has been "do no evil" and we can only hope that this principal stays the same once google becomes public. Just my $.02. I will of course continue using google every day.
The issue here is simple: if the current allocation of frequencies is cutting into emergency services, then that needs to be fixed.
The FCC was debating letting Nextel reorganize the 800MHz band in return for their slice. This no doubt pissed off all their competitors who had to pay millions for their GHz freqs.
Usefull links:
Slashdot: FCC to Reorganize 800 band.
FCC Options and Alternatives for 800 band