You don't have to get it either: I like ice-cream a lot, but I only get it at an actual ice cream store. I've tried them all (excluding haagen-dasz, mövenpick and the likes) in my town, and there are about 1-2 that taste like they're good at making it themselves. Did you know that chocolate ice cream with chocolate in it actually tastes a lot like chocolate? Delicious. Furthermore you support your like tradesman instead of some multi-billionaire.
Back in Holland, I used to go to "Australian" every now and then, I think the only chain that managed to capture the taste of proper ice cream.
Funny thing is, I have a scientific interest in these subjects, the chemistry and physics behind food is fascinating, but I would like to see this chemistry and physics used to make more "honest" food, with less additives, instead of more "cheap" food. The main problem is that the only food companies that can afford a good scientific department, are also the ones that are mostly lead by the wishes of their stock holders. It's changing a bit now, with "molecular cooking" becoming trendy even at the level of individual restaurant cooks.
Hey, I'm not sure if so many more kids are grown up in broken marriages or not, but having had not much of a father myself, without getting overly fat. I (and my siblings) have been grown up way overprotected, though, and this is not good for getting a relationship. When you have taken over your mother's concern "what if this person won't be the right for me?", you will never ever get the chance to mess up and learn for yourself. I haven't messed up enough until now, and it really is a problem for me at the moment I mess up something in my relationship, I just don't know a natural way to solve it. Overall I came out fine, but in general, not being able to get a relationship, be it a good or bad one, is bad for the self-image and will contribute to getting fat. All these things contribute, but I think the main line is:
It's all about raising your kid based on fear. Fear that "something might happen". It can't be the "terrorists": can someone explain me while even in the 80's, when there was still the cold war threat (I remember a pop song about the A-bomb being a top hit in my youth), I could still go out and do my thing, without my parents being worried shit?
I might be on the other side of this at some point. Take the example of bicycle helmets: I know and understand that statistically, a bicycle helmet will immensely lower the risk of damage after a biking accident. I know it is very smart to wear one, and could save you from having to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. But you know what, you couldn't even get decent bicycle helmets in the early eighties, and still I would bike without anyone being worried about not having a bicycle helmet! When I will have kids, could I let them drive around without them? If something would happen, would I be guilty all my life because "it could have been prevented"? I can't predict, then again, this all depends on my willingness to wear a helmet. Try convincing your kid to wear a helmet that makes you look like an idiot without wearing one yourself. We'll see what happens.
Let's be honest with ourselves, you can read no parenting books or hundred, but in the end nobody knows a f**k about parenting, it just comes naturally (or not). But the wrongest way to parent is being afraid of making mistakes. Make mistakes yourself, let your kid make his own mistakes, so the kid has to figure out how to clean up the mess afterwards. It's the most important part of learning and life.
How is a "journalist" more revenue generating than Engadget? Excuse me, but I don't buy crappy electronics magazines, outdated when they are released and generally just a waste of paper. I think a large fraction of the kind of people that are interested in the newest and biggest for tvs or any other gadgets now their way to engadget better than to some crappy journal.
Academic code from a quality point of view is completely horrible.
As an academic I hope, for my own sake, that the quality of a code doesn't represent the intelligence of the one who wrote it, but more the lack of proper training in writing proper code. A lot of academic software is meant to solve one specific problem and then forget about it. At some point someone discovers that with a bit of rewriting an existing code can be re-used for another project, and over a few years you have yourself a 'software package' based on a combination of scripts, fortran, and C code, with a Makefile that should be tuned by hand and an input file format that is only comprehensible to the one who wrote it, and breaks at the moment you reverse two lines. Let's not talk about documentation at this point.
Things are getting better, though, projects like gromacs (a moleculer dynamics package) and jmol (a viewer), are build up pretty strictly, carefully written and sufficiently documented.
Crafting a solid code is an important and difficult task, which requires an experienced person to do it. A PhD is bound to have experience, but more likely in developing algorithms, not in writing solid code. I guess a matter of hiring the right person for the right job.
Wait, wait, the iPhone is a phone with the computing power close to my current PC (an old VIA, I can bet the iPhone has a better GPU than my on-board one). Almost its full size is one big screen. Doesn't all this imply that it should be able to run videos easily?
If I would want a phone with less features, I would bloody not spend 900 euros on it, and for that price end up getting locked in to one provider. Actually I do find phones with less features better, and in europe there are a lot of pre-paid phones without even a camera available starting about 10-30 euros. I got mine at 12. I can call with it and clearly understand and speak with the people at the other end.
I also want a small portable computer, which is why I ordered an EEE that, *GASP*, actually allows you to install software on it if there are computing things you want to do with it that weren't on there by default.
I have used (but never my own) Apple PCs already since the first one-box Macintoshes. On several occasions I was almost convinced I should get an apple product for myself. But everytime Apple itself manages to put me off by limiting the end-users' choice to do with their interesting machines what the end users wants. For example, if I want an MP3 player, I want to be able to mount it like a flash drive and copy music to and from it. This works for my simple SD-card based MP3 player, I got a SD card with USB outlet, and on every OS that supports USB disks I can change my music. The newest model iPod will not give you this possibility, though, I know someone who doesn't own either an apple or a windows pc and has been trying the last week (by reading forums etc.) to get his iPod actually accept his music. Despite the excellent user interface on the device itself (which surpasses any music player user interface I know), I will never buy an iPod for myself or friends, just because they are heavily crippled for their main task.
I didn't read it, but everybody knows that Sun is pressing ideas like this (netpc etc.) for years, so it makes real sense. I read Jonathan Schwartz's blogs every now and then, at one point he mentioned a NYC company that had trouble growing because there was no place left on the roof for air conditioning outlets. It is Sun's focus to change that with their software/hardware: just put a datacenter somewhere xx miles away in the fields, and you won't have cooling problems at your offices.
In that way, they actually _are_ eating their own dog food. If they can use virtualization etc. etc. in their own company using their own hardware/software at some external datacenter, then they are an excellent showcase for their clients.
I think the confusion is caused by a bad formulation of the plan, the fact that I am actually trying to explain it here shows enough! I have the impression that Sun has the right ideas and the right technology, but terribly fails in bringing a convincing way that they have a economically viable strategy. They open sourced almost all their software assets recently, they started to OEM Solaris to Dell (how will that sell Sun hardware?), and it goes on. Many comments on JS's blog are from confused small investors that wonder how they will ever get to see any money coming back from their stocks. I understand Sun's problem, hardware has a either a low profit marge (Dell) or you need convincing ways to sell the expensive hardware Sun or IBM sells. Sun is trying in many many ways to find a revolutionary way to do this, but they seem to forget that in the end all you need is a talented, convincing salesman to get the hardware to the costumer.
Bottom line: your tech is ok, but get a PR and sales department that works, Sun!
But still I think the EEE is one of the reasons that MS wants to gain so much control at the OLPC. The EEE and the whole series of computers that will follow will revolutionize computing-on-the-go. AND be the main computer for many people in emerging markets. As microsoft found out while getting windows on the EEE, no current version of windows is up for the task to give a bearable user experience. The user experience is also clearly behind the one the Xandros version that asus had developed. Microsoft is seeing they are on the losing end of a battle for what will probably the biggest computer market for end users, and they will put all their moneypower behind ways to end this. Most likely not investing on actually making an OS that is practical, but at least pushing competition away.
You can still get NXT desktop speakers, the appropriately shaped sonicum speakers, but at a price!
However, as you say, the cabinet is important. To avoid using another power connector I especially wanted a USB speaker, even though I know that these can be pretty sucky. I listened to the ultra-flat speakers (I guess using NXT), but it screws up all the depth of the music you're listening to. I tried some strange unstable conic device, but it just created noise at higher volumes. Then there is a pretty expensive yamaha USB bar, but I wanted loose speakers.
I finally bought a jaytec USB speaker set, the only USB speakers I could find that come in a pretty decent MDF cabinet, 2-way even (separate tweeter). It is amazing. No hi-fi of course, but just the result of some people who put in a little bit of effort to build a speaker cabinet that has the prerequisites to sound well, and you can hear that immediately.
Hmm, maybe not the majority, but still an awful lot of them:
in 2006, GM sold about 9 million cars world-wide. In 2007, 2 million GM cars were sold in Europe. 400.000 of those European GM cars were Chevrolets, which wondered me until I realized these are mostly the popular small cars originally from the Daewoo division (Matiz, for example).
Also here trains don't stop at your doorstep, but a decent bus and tramway system helps out. I guess that in the US, a fast train system could have worked in the relatively dense areas in California and in the northeast. But it's probably too expensive to retrofit these areas. The rest is too far away from anything else to get a useful fast train network.
As for my snide: Apart from the excellent (but expensive) train system, there is also a nice collection of Autobahns to be proud of! Partly without speed limit! I very much like to drive around my car, and I am even more amazed of how comfortable a train ride is in one of these ICEs.
But you know what, I actually get your point. I'm from Holland originally, and that is one of the places where some sort of automated transport should be obligatory as soon as possible. The population density is immense, as soon as the working day starts the complete highway gets clogged. Trains don't bring much relief, they're pretty full as well, and the last years the government had the brilliant idea to build suburbs "American style", away from any kind of public transport, and combine this with office parks next to the highway, but away from train stations.
If the resulting stress of all these commuters could be converted into energy, the country probably wouldn't need any power station anymore;)
Your case is likely colored by the kind of work that needs to be done in investment banking (and insurance). Some of the algorithms used (finite difference, monte carlo) are very closely to those algorithms needed in engineering or physics, physical chemistry, or even in developing a game engine as you say. I know of many theoretical chemists and physicists that moved on to banking after finishing their Ph.D.
On the other hand, most day-to-day administrative/financial work outside of investment banking is database work (SAP, anyone?), which would require a totally different kind of profile. In numbers of jobs, these hugely outrank investment banking, inversely so for the salary. There is a nasty trend to 'grade' universities on their output in percentage of students finishing their degree, and looking at the amount of alumni getting fast employment. From that "market" point of view, a university would likely teach their comp. sci. students the latest SAP and whatever language that is popular that day, in some easy courses.
Point is, that is not what a university is for. In Germany there is a clear distinction in trade-oriented colleges ("Fachhochschule") and science-oriented universities. The first are meant for students that have a clear job in mind, courses are less theoretical and they will get a good training for their field. Universities, on the other hand, are meant to give a theoretical foundation and broad choice in subjects to the student, and let the students find out their way through the course, at the end not much closer to a job, but with a lot of "academic" self-development skills. Both teaching institutes have their good cause, but there seems to be a trend in universities to throw away their academic value in favor of increasing their throughput of 'successful' students.
I think university boards and politics can put a halt this, and should. Beginning with ending the use of the percentage of students finishing with a degree as a statistic of success. Point is that it is an easy number to present, and educational quality isn't as easily quantified. I'm still pretty proud that at the chemistry faculty at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam were I was studying it was decided to put the harder math course early in the program, to help students that were weak in math realize that chemistry at the university level might not be the best choice for them, at a point where switching wouldn't mean a lot of lost years of study. They now also offer 'life sciences' to catch the large group of less math-inclined students, the high number of students enable the employment of the staff needed to teach hardcore chemistry to the few hardcore chemistry students left. (To understand the problem: In my year we started with 20 students, about the same amount of staff was needed to teach the various courses in the curriculum. The university will earn much more from a law department, where about 1 staff member is needed per 100 students.)
Something different regarding your "biologist" example at the end: when a biologist reaches a point where quantum theory might be needed, it will be very smart to realize that this is way above his/her head. The biologist will make a smart move to search for an expert on quantum theory, who will immediately see if it would be a waste of time or an exciting possibility for collaboration.
A biologist with a "the sky is the limit" attitude might have started the quantum work anyway ("it sounds cool"), waste a year on halfway grasping the theory and getting GAUSSIAN installed, and end up with a crappy bunch of research that is likely to be rejected in any decent journal. A big part of understanding your field is knowing the limits of your understanding and possibilities (and as far as quantum theory is concerned, there are a lot of limits to be aware of:).
Yes you're right, software conflicts happen everywhere. The fact that I'm sticking to Linux is as you say, it has the most possibilities to deal with such problems. Even on Suse you can open yast as a full X GUI or when X is bothering (or you are on a remote system/failsafe session), a terminal-based GUI. In the early days, when also the GUI would fail, I would read up on the documentation and edit the files manually (I'm looking at you, X86conf!).
Now I don't want to spend time looking on forums for the exact video driver in my machine, and would just download several systems and take the one that sets up the sound, video, and DVD access for me with the least problems. I have big hopes for Ubuntu here, it has the perfect combination of a solid machinery (from debian) and a strive for ease-of-use.
I don't know much about MacOSX, but last time I tried to get a program compiled on a colleague's macbook, it turned out that the compiler was not present and a lot of hoops had to be solved before anything "fancy" could be done with it.
I want to be able to sleep/study/play video games while on the road.
If you want to do that, why not take the train? ICE high speed trains in Germany can move you around between all big cities with a speed of 200-300 km/h. Honestly, they will bring you there faster than any car could, and considering the time you need to get to/from an airport, checking in, etc., they are a better alternative than an airplane for in-Germany transport.
I won't see driverless cars managing that in any next decade, and also not giving you the comfort of a train-ride (the immense mass of the train and its suspension helps in smoothing the ride). Furthermore they come equipped with power outlets, and are currenlty getting fitted with wi-fi.
Or maybe you live in a country that didn't invest in a high-quality train network.
Schiphol airport: I am required to answer a whole range of questions that I packed my bag alone, I didn't take anything from a stranger, etc. etc. Then, since I was carrying a backpack, I am required to leave it in the big, open, rack with backpacks, standing next to the check-in area until the final check-in time. Who can assure me that some person after me doesn't slip anything in my backpack when I'm going through the customs? It's out of my sight and reachable by anyone!
If you want to be secure, ok, do it, but then do it good. Don't come to us with these bogus security checks that are just here to make life generally crap and generate fear among us. Oh, wait, that is what these checks were for in the first place, we should be scared for the "terrorists" that want to take our freedom.
I use Linux for a good ten years now, and if I look on the state of installing things on the latest opensuse, it's only just half way good for any Joe Bloggs (or even me)
Last week I needed to install a codec, the gnome media player (I forgot its name, can you imagine) sent me to the correct opensuse webpage concerning the missing codec, I there went to the 'community' solution and clicked an automatic yast install link. This opened yast and I had just to press some buttons. But then, a dependency conflict! Well, actually, it didn't tell me what the conflict was, I just got a pop-up with the possibilities: "find an optimal solution for everything" (this normally gets in an endless loop), "install packet a.23.3.0b (this may affect your system)", "ignore for this instance", "don't install packet a.23.3.0b".
I clicked away as best as a could, I got no hint whatsoever on the effects any of my decisions could have on other packages. In the end, the codec worked but my flash player in mozilla was broken. I fixed it by reinstalling the flash player plugin for mozilla I could find in Yast (I can't remember having chosen to remove that). Also, now the flash player just halts every now and then, only to restart on shutting down mozilla and restarting.
I know, I know, this is still a hundred time better than it was before, but as long linux requires deep knowledge of its workings to change basic functionalities (it's not like flash needs to start a deamon or a server process), I wouldn't preinstall it on Joe Bloggs' PC just yet.
I guess they realized it would be a lost cause fighting against Microsoft Office, throwing away developer time. Then again, if they would have endured and realized back then that the eternal reign of MS Office could be overthrown, they might be growing by now, at a time where switching from office** to office 2007 is just as hard as switching to another suite, and with a current public and political outcry for open document formats.
The first thing I used after wordperfect 5.1 was Lotus WordPro, since it came with my Aptiva pentium 100 "multimedia" pc. This was actually a pretty good program, it had a latex-like equation editor, and came with a nicer selection of fonts than the default MSoffice. I just checked and it appears that IBM changed the whole SmartSuite to something called "symphony" now, made it free of charge and able to work with ODF.
IBM may be on to something here, the lack of backward compatibility in MSOffice plus the high costs of obligatory contract renewals will make more and more people (better: the companies that employ these people) realize the problems MS gets them in, and look for alternatives. All these dirty tricks might end up to be MS nailing its own coffin: as soon as companies switch to another browser, to another office suite, why should they be dependent on MS at all?
Other indication: Amazon in Germany sent out a letter to all people who preordered an EEE that there might be "limited availability" due to the big press coverage. I sure hope I preordered early enough:(
I don't know how fast you can read, but reading through the standard EULA is a hard task for most of us. It also depends on the product. When considering a DSL, server, or mobile phone contract I'll check first to see the rules on ending the contract (because this will be the most expensive part), and if they mention a Fair Use Policy or a way to cap data transfer above a certain limit, not to get into huge costs. The rest of the text I'll leave it for what it is. And the only reason why I read these things is because I had bad experiences in the past, otherwise I wouldn't have known about them.
When consider buying a 8 euro headset, would I read the standard eula? Would you?
Reading EULAs is a time-consuming activity that sometimes doesn't even help you further in knowing what you're up to because of the "encrypted" legal language. And you really need to know what you are looking for. In that respect, it is actually useful to read slashdot and especially forums on the product of your interest and get info on cases like these.
I'd mod you insightful if I could. With 250 dollars for a hard drive replacement you might as well just get a corporate support contract (I know I know, these are even more expensive).
No he doesn't. As a non-american I've heard much worse accents than that. His presentation is very professional and comfortable to watch. So that makes me wonder, how the.... do you think you sound? If you sound like you write, it'll probably be dick-headed. This may sound harsh, but I think that's appropriate in this case.
As for the projects he's doing, you're right, it's awesome. Even watching the youtube video of the headtracking gives you the feeling that you were watching a 3D effect, I wonder how it looks in real life.
As a European, this actually bugged me as well. AND, this being a movie release date, the date will even not apply to us, we will get to see it half a year later or something, due to unknown reasons. Useless viral advertising.
Useless Slashdot article as well, so allow me to get slightly off-topic by making a link to the cover with the decapitated statue of liberty and check this part from the wikipedia article on the statue: "Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures." How in the world is making stupid little souvenirs patentable??? If it would be a trademark or copyright it would have made sense, but a patent? See, the patent system was broken then already!
Isn't owning almost all internet-use data of the US population (and more!) an issue for anti-trust? With their "monopoly" on gathering this data, their marketing possibilities by far exceed that of any competitor. [ tin foil hat mode ] Maybe a single and fairly complete database of browsing data will come in handy for some government institutions?
Yeah, and with your reasoning, people that are driving drunk but were not in an accident should not have their driving license temporarily retracted either. What they were doing was reckless, likely to cause physical damage to the pilot, and could have ended disastrously.
I actually never liked the high availability of high-power lasers. As a student I worked a bit with high-power light sources for fluorescence spectrometry. These things are handled with a lot of care to be sure not to blind yourself or your colleagues. In my case the thing was pre-built and you just had to make sure not to open the case while on. Now take these things, lower their power a bit, and give them to idiots. Smart idea, or what?
Ratio of people that own a tablet pc vs. people that run games on their computer -> one to a million? Exaggerating here, but still.
I'd love to own a tablet PC, and I would run Vista on it if I would notice it would mean less work and more functionality to me than using XP. I'd also love to own the 3.8 Ghz Q6600 you mention, but I have a 6 year old PC, I just use my HOME PC for accessing the internet, getting photos from my camera, and writing letters once in a while. You seem to have access to quite the computing power needed for Vista out there. I actually ordered an EEE, that won't help me to be able to run Vista, but I am curious about the user experience they manage to get out of the little machine.
That's the point here, a PC is supposed to make your work easier and more comfortable. I use Linux at work every day (XP at my 6 year old pc at home) and many things of it are hindering ease of use with Linux (I need to use sudo to switch between USB boxes and headphones, then again, could I do this in Vista?). Many things are helping me, excellent scripting tools, keyboard shortcuts, a choice to use any program that most fits your needs. If I get disappointed in the ease of configuration of one Linux version, I'll switch to another. And all distributions seem to evolve slowly but steadily to a more pleasant user experience (I just used Gnome for the first time in 10 years, it's lovely!). Lots of freedom, the user still needs to do a lot of work before getting it to work nicely, but he can, if persevering enough.
The problem with Vista is that it seems to limits your freedom on how to use your own pc, while lowering the overall performance and not bringing more functionality (except for tablets, maybe). The user is limited to the amount of changes that can be made. You can turn off the visual gadgets, and some services I guess, but everything that's not in a menu is out of your control.
I'm getting a bit tired of all the Vista bashing, but it NEEDS to be repeated until Microsoft learns their lesson: they should listen to what their users want for once, instead of pushing their sick beliefs of what software should do onto their costumers.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in Holland, I used to go to "Australian" every now and then, I think the only chain that managed to capture the taste of proper ice cream.
Funny thing is, I have a scientific interest in these subjects, the chemistry and physics behind food is fascinating, but I would like to see this chemistry and physics used to make more "honest" food, with less additives, instead of more "cheap" food. The main problem is that the only food companies that can afford a good scientific department, are also the ones that are mostly lead by the wishes of their stock holders. It's changing a bit now, with "molecular cooking" becoming trendy even at the level of individual restaurant cooks.
It's all about raising your kid based on fear. Fear that "something might happen". It can't be the "terrorists": can someone explain me while even in the 80's, when there was still the cold war threat (I remember a pop song about the A-bomb being a top hit in my youth), I could still go out and do my thing, without my parents being worried shit?
I might be on the other side of this at some point. Take the example of bicycle helmets: I know and understand that statistically, a bicycle helmet will immensely lower the risk of damage after a biking accident. I know it is very smart to wear one, and could save you from having to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. But you know what, you couldn't even get decent bicycle helmets in the early eighties, and still I would bike without anyone being worried about not having a bicycle helmet! When I will have kids, could I let them drive around without them? If something would happen, would I be guilty all my life because "it could have been prevented"? I can't predict, then again, this all depends on my willingness to wear a helmet. Try convincing your kid to wear a helmet that makes you look like an idiot without wearing one yourself. We'll see what happens.
Let's be honest with ourselves, you can read no parenting books or hundred, but in the end nobody knows a f**k about parenting, it just comes naturally (or not). But the wrongest way to parent is being afraid of making mistakes. Make mistakes yourself, let your kid make his own mistakes, so the kid has to figure out how to clean up the mess afterwards. It's the most important part of learning and life.
How is a "journalist" more revenue generating than Engadget? Excuse me, but I don't buy crappy electronics magazines, outdated when they are released and generally just a waste of paper. I think a large fraction of the kind of people that are interested in the newest and biggest for tvs or any other gadgets now their way to engadget better than to some crappy journal.
As an academic I hope, for my own sake, that the quality of a code doesn't represent the intelligence of the one who wrote it, but more the lack of proper training in writing proper code. A lot of academic software is meant to solve one specific problem and then forget about it. At some point someone discovers that with a bit of rewriting an existing code can be re-used for another project, and over a few years you have yourself a 'software package' based on a combination of scripts, fortran, and C code, with a Makefile that should be tuned by hand and an input file format that is only comprehensible to the one who wrote it, and breaks at the moment you reverse two lines. Let's not talk about documentation at this point.
Things are getting better, though, projects like gromacs (a moleculer dynamics package) and jmol (a viewer), are build up pretty strictly, carefully written and sufficiently documented.
Crafting a solid code is an important and difficult task, which requires an experienced person to do it. A PhD is bound to have experience, but more likely in developing algorithms, not in writing solid code. I guess a matter of hiring the right person for the right job.
If I would want a phone with less features, I would bloody not spend 900 euros on it, and for that price end up getting locked in to one provider. Actually I do find phones with less features better, and in europe there are a lot of pre-paid phones without even a camera available starting about 10-30 euros. I got mine at 12. I can call with it and clearly understand and speak with the people at the other end.
I also want a small portable computer, which is why I ordered an EEE that, *GASP*, actually allows you to install software on it if there are computing things you want to do with it that weren't on there by default.
I have used (but never my own) Apple PCs already since the first one-box Macintoshes. On several occasions I was almost convinced I should get an apple product for myself. But everytime Apple itself manages to put me off by limiting the end-users' choice to do with their interesting machines what the end users wants. For example, if I want an MP3 player, I want to be able to mount it like a flash drive and copy music to and from it. This works for my simple SD-card based MP3 player, I got a SD card with USB outlet, and on every OS that supports USB disks I can change my music. The newest model iPod will not give you this possibility, though, I know someone who doesn't own either an apple or a windows pc and has been trying the last week (by reading forums etc.) to get his iPod actually accept his music. Despite the excellent user interface on the device itself (which surpasses any music player user interface I know), I will never buy an iPod for myself or friends, just because they are heavily crippled for their main task.
In that way, they actually _are_ eating their own dog food. If they can use virtualization etc. etc. in their own company using their own hardware/software at some external datacenter, then they are an excellent showcase for their clients.
I think the confusion is caused by a bad formulation of the plan, the fact that I am actually trying to explain it here shows enough! I have the impression that Sun has the right ideas and the right technology, but terribly fails in bringing a convincing way that they have a economically viable strategy. They open sourced almost all their software assets recently, they started to OEM Solaris to Dell (how will that sell Sun hardware?), and it goes on. Many comments on JS's blog are from confused small investors that wonder how they will ever get to see any money coming back from their stocks. I understand Sun's problem, hardware has a either a low profit marge (Dell) or you need convincing ways to sell the expensive hardware Sun or IBM sells. Sun is trying in many many ways to find a revolutionary way to do this, but they seem to forget that in the end all you need is a talented, convincing salesman to get the hardware to the costumer.
Bottom line: your tech is ok, but get a PR and sales department that works, Sun!
But still I think the EEE is one of the reasons that MS wants to gain so much control at the OLPC. The EEE and the whole series of computers that will follow will revolutionize computing-on-the-go. AND be the main computer for many people in emerging markets. As microsoft found out while getting windows on the EEE, no current version of windows is up for the task to give a bearable user experience. The user experience is also clearly behind the one the Xandros version that asus had developed. Microsoft is seeing they are on the losing end of a battle for what will probably the biggest computer market for end users, and they will put all their moneypower behind ways to end this. Most likely not investing on actually making an OS that is practical, but at least pushing competition away.
However, as you say, the cabinet is important. To avoid using another power connector I especially wanted a USB speaker, even though I know that these can be pretty sucky. I listened to the ultra-flat speakers (I guess using NXT), but it screws up all the depth of the music you're listening to. I tried some strange unstable conic device, but it just created noise at higher volumes. Then there is a pretty expensive yamaha USB bar, but I wanted loose speakers.
I finally bought a jaytec USB speaker set, the only USB speakers I could find that come in a pretty decent MDF cabinet, 2-way even (separate tweeter). It is amazing. No hi-fi of course, but just the result of some people who put in a little bit of effort to build a speaker cabinet that has the prerequisites to sound well, and you can hear that immediately.
Also here trains don't stop at your doorstep, but a decent bus and tramway system helps out. I guess that in the US, a fast train system could have worked in the relatively dense areas in California and in the northeast. But it's probably too expensive to retrofit these areas. The rest is too far away from anything else to get a useful fast train network.
As for my snide: Apart from the excellent (but expensive) train system, there is also a nice collection of Autobahns to be proud of! Partly without speed limit! I very much like to drive around my car, and I am even more amazed of how comfortable a train ride is in one of these ICEs.
But you know what, I actually get your point. I'm from Holland originally, and that is one of the places where some sort of automated transport should be obligatory as soon as possible. The population density is immense, as soon as the working day starts the complete highway gets clogged. Trains don't bring much relief, they're pretty full as well, and the last years the government had the brilliant idea to build suburbs "American style", away from any kind of public transport, and combine this with office parks next to the highway, but away from train stations.
If the resulting stress of all these commuters could be converted into energy, the country probably wouldn't need any power station anymore ;)
On the other hand, most day-to-day administrative/financial work outside of investment banking is database work (SAP, anyone?), which would require a totally different kind of profile. In numbers of jobs, these hugely outrank investment banking, inversely so for the salary. There is a nasty trend to 'grade' universities on their output in percentage of students finishing their degree, and looking at the amount of alumni getting fast employment. From that "market" point of view, a university would likely teach their comp. sci. students the latest SAP and whatever language that is popular that day, in some easy courses.
Point is, that is not what a university is for. In Germany there is a clear distinction in trade-oriented colleges ("Fachhochschule") and science-oriented universities. The first are meant for students that have a clear job in mind, courses are less theoretical and they will get a good training for their field. Universities, on the other hand, are meant to give a theoretical foundation and broad choice in subjects to the student, and let the students find out their way through the course, at the end not much closer to a job, but with a lot of "academic" self-development skills. Both teaching institutes have their good cause, but there seems to be a trend in universities to throw away their academic value in favor of increasing their throughput of 'successful' students.
I think university boards and politics can put a halt this, and should. Beginning with ending the use of the percentage of students finishing with a degree as a statistic of success. Point is that it is an easy number to present, and educational quality isn't as easily quantified. I'm still pretty proud that at the chemistry faculty at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam were I was studying it was decided to put the harder math course early in the program, to help students that were weak in math realize that chemistry at the university level might not be the best choice for them, at a point where switching wouldn't mean a lot of lost years of study. They now also offer 'life sciences' to catch the large group of less math-inclined students, the high number of students enable the employment of the staff needed to teach hardcore chemistry to the few hardcore chemistry students left. (To understand the problem: In my year we started with 20 students, about the same amount of staff was needed to teach the various courses in the curriculum. The university will earn much more from a law department, where about 1 staff member is needed per 100 students.)
Something different regarding your "biologist" example at the end: when a biologist reaches a point where quantum theory might be needed, it will be very smart to realize that this is way above his/her head. The biologist will make a smart move to search for an expert on quantum theory, who will immediately see if it would be a waste of time or an exciting possibility for collaboration. A biologist with a "the sky is the limit" attitude might have started the quantum work anyway ("it sounds cool"), waste a year on halfway grasping the theory and getting GAUSSIAN installed, and end up with a crappy bunch of research that is likely to be rejected in any decent journal. A big part of understanding your field is knowing the limits of your understanding and possibilities (and as far as quantum theory is concerned, there are a lot of limits to be aware of :).
Now I don't want to spend time looking on forums for the exact video driver in my machine, and would just download several systems and take the one that sets up the sound, video, and DVD access for me with the least problems. I have big hopes for Ubuntu here, it has the perfect combination of a solid machinery (from debian) and a strive for ease-of-use.
I don't know much about MacOSX, but last time I tried to get a program compiled on a colleague's macbook, it turned out that the compiler was not present and a lot of hoops had to be solved before anything "fancy" could be done with it.
If you want to do that, why not take the train? ICE high speed trains in Germany can move you around between all big cities with a speed of 200-300 km/h. Honestly, they will bring you there faster than any car could, and considering the time you need to get to/from an airport, checking in, etc., they are a better alternative than an airplane for in-Germany transport.
I won't see driverless cars managing that in any next decade, and also not giving you the comfort of a train-ride (the immense mass of the train and its suspension helps in smoothing the ride). Furthermore they come equipped with power outlets, and are currenlty getting fitted with wi-fi.
Or maybe you live in a country that didn't invest in a high-quality train network.
If you want to be secure, ok, do it, but then do it good. Don't come to us with these bogus security checks that are just here to make life generally crap and generate fear among us. Oh, wait, that is what these checks were for in the first place, we should be scared for the "terrorists" that want to take our freedom.
Last week I needed to install a codec, the gnome media player (I forgot its name, can you imagine) sent me to the correct opensuse webpage concerning the missing codec, I there went to the 'community' solution and clicked an automatic yast install link. This opened yast and I had just to press some buttons. But then, a dependency conflict! Well, actually, it didn't tell me what the conflict was, I just got a pop-up with the possibilities: "find an optimal solution for everything" (this normally gets in an endless loop), "install packet a.23.3.0b (this may affect your system)", "ignore for this instance", "don't install packet a.23.3.0b".
I clicked away as best as a could, I got no hint whatsoever on the effects any of my decisions could have on other packages. In the end, the codec worked but my flash player in mozilla was broken. I fixed it by reinstalling the flash player plugin for mozilla I could find in Yast (I can't remember having chosen to remove that). Also, now the flash player just halts every now and then, only to restart on shutting down mozilla and restarting.
I know, I know, this is still a hundred time better than it was before, but as long linux requires deep knowledge of its workings to change basic functionalities (it's not like flash needs to start a deamon or a server process), I wouldn't preinstall it on Joe Bloggs' PC just yet.
The first thing I used after wordperfect 5.1 was Lotus WordPro, since it came with my Aptiva pentium 100 "multimedia" pc. This was actually a pretty good program, it had a latex-like equation editor, and came with a nicer selection of fonts than the default MSoffice. I just checked and it appears that IBM changed the whole SmartSuite to something called "symphony" now, made it free of charge and able to work with ODF.
IBM may be on to something here, the lack of backward compatibility in MSOffice plus the high costs of obligatory contract renewals will make more and more people (better: the companies that employ these people) realize the problems MS gets them in, and look for alternatives. All these dirty tricks might end up to be MS nailing its own coffin: as soon as companies switch to another browser, to another office suite, why should they be dependent on MS at all?
Other indication: Amazon in Germany sent out a letter to all people who preordered an EEE that there might be "limited availability" due to the big press coverage. I sure hope I preordered early enough :(
I don't know how fast you can read, but reading through the standard EULA is a hard task for most of us. It also depends on the product. When considering a DSL, server, or mobile phone contract I'll check first to see the rules on ending the contract (because this will be the most expensive part), and if they mention a Fair Use Policy or a way to cap data transfer above a certain limit, not to get into huge costs. The rest of the text I'll leave it for what it is. And the only reason why I read these things is because I had bad experiences in the past, otherwise I wouldn't have known about them.
When consider buying a 8 euro headset, would I read the standard eula? Would you?
Reading EULAs is a time-consuming activity that sometimes doesn't even help you further in knowing what you're up to because of the "encrypted" legal language. And you really need to know what you are looking for. In that respect, it is actually useful to read slashdot and especially forums on the product of your interest and get info on cases like these.
I'd mod you insightful if I could. With 250 dollars for a hard drive replacement you might as well just get a corporate support contract (I know I know, these are even more expensive).
Plus, with correctly placed mirrors, you can use it to roast enemies at neighboring islands!
As for the projects he's doing, you're right, it's awesome. Even watching the youtube video of the headtracking gives you the feeling that you were watching a 3D effect, I wonder how it looks in real life.
As a European, this actually bugged me as well. AND, this being a movie release date, the date will even not apply to us, we will get to see it half a year later or something, due to unknown reasons. Useless viral advertising. Useless Slashdot article as well, so allow me to get slightly off-topic by making a link to the cover with the decapitated statue of liberty and check this part from the wikipedia article on the statue: "Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures." How in the world is making stupid little souvenirs patentable??? If it would be a trademark or copyright it would have made sense, but a patent? See, the patent system was broken then already!
Isn't owning almost all internet-use data of the US population (and more!) an issue for anti-trust? With their "monopoly" on gathering this data, their marketing possibilities by far exceed that of any competitor. [ tin foil hat mode ] Maybe a single and fairly complete database of browsing data will come in handy for some government institutions?
I actually never liked the high availability of high-power lasers. As a student I worked a bit with high-power light sources for fluorescence spectrometry. These things are handled with a lot of care to be sure not to blind yourself or your colleagues. In my case the thing was pre-built and you just had to make sure not to open the case while on. Now take these things, lower their power a bit, and give them to idiots. Smart idea, or what?
Ratio of people that own a tablet pc vs. people that run games on their computer -> one to a million? Exaggerating here, but still.
I'd love to own a tablet PC, and I would run Vista on it if I would notice it would mean less work and more functionality to me than using XP. I'd also love to own the 3.8 Ghz Q6600 you mention, but I have a 6 year old PC, I just use my HOME PC for accessing the internet, getting photos from my camera, and writing letters once in a while. You seem to have access to quite the computing power needed for Vista out there. I actually ordered an EEE, that won't help me to be able to run Vista, but I am curious about the user experience they manage to get out of the little machine.
That's the point here, a PC is supposed to make your work easier and more comfortable. I use Linux at work every day (XP at my 6 year old pc at home) and many things of it are hindering ease of use with Linux (I need to use sudo to switch between USB boxes and headphones, then again, could I do this in Vista?). Many things are helping me, excellent scripting tools, keyboard shortcuts, a choice to use any program that most fits your needs. If I get disappointed in the ease of configuration of one Linux version, I'll switch to another. And all distributions seem to evolve slowly but steadily to a more pleasant user experience (I just used Gnome for the first time in 10 years, it's lovely!). Lots of freedom, the user still needs to do a lot of work before getting it to work nicely, but he can, if persevering enough.
The problem with Vista is that it seems to limits your freedom on how to use your own pc, while lowering the overall performance and not bringing more functionality (except for tablets, maybe). The user is limited to the amount of changes that can be made. You can turn off the visual gadgets, and some services I guess, but everything that's not in a menu is out of your control.
I'm getting a bit tired of all the Vista bashing, but it NEEDS to be repeated until Microsoft learns their lesson: they should listen to what their users want for once, instead of pushing their sick beliefs of what software should do onto their costumers.
(no 2 should have been the: "List of anime based on video games", copying under windows is difficult when you're used to the lazy copying under X)