I'm using car-sharing myself. Here in Vienna, Austria, cars are located throughout the town,for me, three pick-up locations are within walking distance (15 minutes max; important for that late-night rides) or I take a bus or tram for one or two stations.
Cars are serviced periodically (washed and fuelled up) by service personnel, so major scratches would be detected at least then. Also, if I pick up the car I do a quick visual check and immediately report any damages (and dirty interior) to the call-center so they can attribute it to the previous user. And I guess that most of the other users do that, so the cars are always in tip-top shape.
I can whole-heartily recommend the system, it's quite convenient. And much cheaper if you only need a car once in a while...
my vision for a soft migration would install linux and vmware on each and every desktop, keep the existing m$ installation but run it inside a virtual machine. that way, every user can continue to work with his well-known office applications, but now, the windows desktop is just one window among others. and linux is just a click away...
and think about the benefits that virtual machines offer: take a snapshot of the virtual harddisk, then let users install whatever they want (within reason). caught a malware? just revert back to the snapshot. this can be as fast as a single click.
I can see the next big thing already... fat-powered cars. Hop in, dump in a bucket o' lard, drive for miles.
Actually you can do this already, if you have a modern diesel engine. Just get that cheap vegetable oil from your local supermarket and pour that. Given the low fuel pirces in the US this probably isn't economical. Yet. But in good old Europe it is. There was a report on german TV about a cab driver who is driving a standard mercedes on free vegetable oil collected from the fast-food restaurants in town. Only drawback: his car is smelling like french fries...:-)
While Rich Text (or HTML) sometimes does have its merits, it shouldn't be the default. Studies from the '80 have shown that people tend to invest their brain power into the looks ("Shall that header be 16 or 18 points? Bold or italic?") instead of the content ("Shall I write about world peace or the latest happy meal toy?") if they get the means...
Think about it: when do you really need a live broadcast? Only when you want viewers to phone in.
TV over BT would and should work like TiVo et al (or good old VCR) are already working: you go through the online TV guide (.torrent files provided via RSS), select what you would like to watch, the client downloads it and you later watch it.
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I'm using car-sharing myself. Here in Vienna, Austria, cars are located throughout the town,for me, three pick-up locations are within walking distance (15 minutes max; important for that late-night rides) or I take a bus or tram for one or two stations.
Cars are serviced periodically (washed and fuelled up) by service personnel, so major scratches would be detected at least then. Also, if I pick up the car I do a quick visual check and immediately report any damages (and dirty interior) to the call-center so they can attribute it to the previous user. And I guess that most of the other users do that, so the cars are always in tip-top shape.
I can whole-heartily recommend the system, it's quite convenient. And much cheaper if you only need a car once in a while...
my vision for a soft migration would install linux and vmware on each and every desktop, keep the existing m$ installation but run it inside a virtual machine. that way, every user can continue to work with his well-known office applications, but now, the windows desktop is just one window among others. and linux is just a click away...
and think about the benefits that virtual machines offer: take a snapshot of the virtual harddisk, then let users install whatever they want (within reason). caught a malware? just revert back to the snapshot. this can be as fast as a single click.
Actually you can do this already, if you have a modern diesel engine. Just get that cheap vegetable oil from your local supermarket and pour that. Given the low fuel pirces in the US this probably isn't economical. Yet. But in good old Europe it is. There was a report on german TV about a cab driver who is driving a standard mercedes on free vegetable oil collected from the fast-food restaurants in town. Only drawback: his car is smelling like french fries... :-)
While Rich Text (or HTML) sometimes does have its merits, it shouldn't be the default. Studies from the '80 have shown that people tend to invest their brain power into the looks ("Shall that header be 16 or 18 points? Bold or italic?") instead of the content ("Shall I write about world peace or the latest happy meal toy?") if they get the means...
Think about it: when do you really need a live broadcast? Only when you want viewers to phone in.
TV over BT would and should work like TiVo et al (or good old VCR) are already working: you go through the online TV guide (.torrent files provided via RSS), select what you would like to watch, the client downloads it and you later watch it.