The first reset that I know of would be the jump from OS-less computers (like C64 or Apple 2 or even DOS in a way) to OS based ones.
The Apple II wasn't 'OS-less' by any stretch of the imagination. It used either Apple DOS or Apple ProDOS as its OS, depending upon which machine and applications you were talking about. I don't know much about the architecture of the C64, but I'll bet it was hardly 'OS-less'.
And there were machines prior to Apple and Commodore that used CP/M as their OS.
And there was never any sudden 'jump' from CLI to GUI. The first machine with a GUI was the Xerox Alto. There were several other GUI implementations between the introduction of the Alto in 1973 (2 years before Apple was even a glint in Steve Jobs' eye) and 1984, when Apple introduced the first widely-popular GUI-based computer, the Macintosh. It wouldn't be until the early 90s that Windows would begin displacing DOS. In fact, in 1995 at the time of the introduction of Windows 95, the OS largest installed-base OS in the world was still MS-DOS.
John C. Dvorak is *STILL* the village idiot. The fact that HE's predicting Apple is going to dominate the desktop OS market means that it'll never happen.
Other things that Dvorak has 'predicted':
that OS/2 would take over the OS market (OS/2 was recently officially killed by IBM)
that Segway would ignite a tech stock comeback (yeah, right)
that the Internet would experience blackouts (where are they?)
that handwriting and voice recognition would never become used in computing in any significant way (they have in some significant, albeit niche applications like PDAs and cell phones)
I could go on and on about Dvorak's idiot predictions...but one thing is certain: he's almost never right.
Maybe he's right this time. First time for everything, you know.;)
The Uncanny Valley is, as noted in the article you've linked to, somehwat controversial. Many argue that Mori has no scientific basis for the Valley.
OTOH, I have personally been disturbed by lifelike mannequins, and well before I ever heard about Mori's research... On the gripping hand, Mori's research involved exactly that -- lifelike mannequins and not real robots. Life-like Mannequins don't move and that's partly what makes them disturbing. If the robot, like this one, moves like a human (at least to some extent) then I think it would probably be less distirubing. Which, somehow, I think I just proved Mori's point using myself as an example...:)
Unless you live in an older neighborhood where the lines are still on poles and squirrels chew through the cables and the infrastructure is damned near 100 years old. My experience with POTS is something significantly less than 100% reliable.
it survives power outages
Under some conditions, yes. In some areas, a power outage may bring down your phone line if the telco has installed certain types of equipment, such as boosters to overcome the fact that the network is way over capacity and aging.
Furthermore, lots of people have cordless phones and don't have a wired phone as a backup. Cordless phones do not work in the event of a power outage.
I don't think it can be brought down by a buggy TV in your neighbors house
Electrical noise can certainly bring down a cordless phone, even the nifty new 5.8GHz ones. Wired phones are definitely less vulnerable to noise, but not completely impervious. High amounts of electrical noise can generate interfernce and affect voice quality and even reliablility -- even on a wired phone.
More to the point, if these services are going to be sold as a replacement for your POTS line then they damn well ought to be regulated like your POTS line -- with requirements for reliability and appeals processes if you get hosed
I disagree. Much of the regulatory infrastructure is based around the idea that phones are 'hard-wired' into the PTSN. With VoIP, I can use my phone anywhere in the world that has high-speed Internet access. What happens if I have an outage while I'm on vacation in another state or even another country? Who's responsible? My VoIP provider probably can't be held liable...
Yes, while it's far from being a replacement for commercialware, the codebase provides for a large portion of basic vector editing capabilities.
Its much better than it was, definitely. It's much closer to the functionality of earlier versions of programs like CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator than any of the previous versions. With support for
layers (very important!)
manual text kerning
Put text on path
flow text into frame
'live' gradient editor
bitmap tracing
support for union/difference/etc. of objects (already in 0.3x, but added late)
export support for.eps and.ps formats
Inkscape is on par with older versions of commercialware, with some support for newer-style features like the live gradient editor.
Some features that are still sorely missing (compared to commercialware) are:
Object/text morphing via 'envelope' and 'perspective' type functions
support for automatic drop shadowing
more export filters that just.eps and.ps. Specifically, support for Windows Metafile (.wmf), Adobe Illustrator 88 (.ai), AutoCAD DXF (.dxf) (for 2D and 3D CAD conversion), HPGL and/or HPGL/2 (for output to plotters)
ability to import at least.eps,.ps and.wmf..dxf and.ai would be nice.
better clipboard support... ability to integrate with desktop environments so that SVG objects can be embedded in other applications
with those additions and a few more, Inkscape could be well on its way to being a complete replacement for Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Already as a graphic designer I could probably spend most of my time in Inkscape and only have to bring in commercialware for a few little features.
I'm betting Apple has developed its own DRM to protect Mac OS X. They don't want to EFI. The fact that x86 Macs won't have EFI will be a major selling point for Macs... Apple's goal of making Mac hardware cheap will put them in contention with the likes of HP and Dell and Lenovo. Note that the fact that IBM pulled out of the PC biz at this point isn't a coincidence either.
Maybe if the FCC starts hurting the radios some of them will be less inticed to the practice?
How? It wasn't the radio stations that were breaking the law, it was Sony. Unfortunately, there's nothing illegal about taking bribes to play songs...only offering bribes to play songs.
Graphics card manufacturers really need to get on the silent PC bandwagon, instead of focusing on how many trillion polys per milli-second they can render.
Or, instead of focusing on how many trillion polys per millisecond YOU can render, consider buying a videocard without a fan, rather than one with blazing speed. For instance, the Asus nVIDIA MX4000 supports 8x AGP; it may not be the fastest card, and at $35 street it's not the most expensive either. But it doesn't havea fan.
These things are cool. The have random numbers on them that change once a minute. These are sync'd with software that runs on the banks servers.
I've worked with them before for access to VPNs and such. Great tools.
this is very common indeed: current SOP is for them to move your money to another account at the same bank to which they've already stolen a matching debit card. move cash, then confederate will go into a branch and withdraw the money in cash and vanish...
I'm not up on banks in the U.K., but here in the U.S., most debit/atm cards have a maximum daily withdrawl, usually around 300 USD. Withdrawing money always requires an ID that matches the name on the account. Most banks keep a signature card and for withdrawls over a certain amount (1,000-2,000 USD or so), they have a policy of verifying against the original signature card.
So I'm not sure how easy this 'current SOP' would be given the way you describe it.
Voice on device: "This is the Prison Mess Hall, where gansters such as Al Capone and the Birdman ate there meals. The prisoners were served nutritious meals... "
*popup*
"Speaking of nutritious meals, did you know that McDonald's on Market Street in San Francisco has its Fruit and Walnut Salad on sale for 99 cents? Get your FRUIT BUZZ after you escape from Alcatraz!"
And these are the things that make a good, production-capable operating system. These are the things that keep Unix and Windows fully-entrenched in server rooms and on desktops.
Of course, there are plenty of people with specialized needs out there and those needs might differ from what the mainstream wants. MacOS has always done well in the fields of graphic design and A/V production (as well as being a good general desktop OS). SGI Irix was, at one point, the premier OS for 3D graphics/CGI video production. Linux has always been a great desktop for developers (but has been seeking to become a great mainstream desktop lately, of course). BeOS/Zeta seeks to fill the multimedia production niche.
There will always be niche OSes for niche applications; sometimes the mainstream just doesn't cut it.
Gotta buy their hardware to get some of their software, of course.
But look at their annual report. Look at page 29, near the bottom.
Mac sales are about US$4 billion. Now look at net sales of other products underneath that, totally $8 billion. Even if you took out iPods ($1.3 billion) and other equipment (951 million), that stills leaves you with $6 billion. That means that Apple makes about as much on software as it does on hardware -- hardly a company that's betting the farm on Macs.
Just the same as the reason they write MacOS is to sell computers.
Or just like they write QuickTime to sell compu....errr...no....
Let's see...let's take a careful look at Apple's Web page, shall we?
I see iTunes 4.9 supports Podcasting... An ad about Mac OS X 10.4.2... A link to download some dashboard widgets... Oh, yeah... a BIG ad about iTMS... And an ad for the iPod.
What's Apple selling these days? Out of six things highlighted on their web page, only ONE is about hardware.
You gotta click on 'Store' before you see one single piece of hardware (aside from that iPod).
Already been solved.
Try a nice, recent Linux distribution like Fedora Core 3/4 or Knoppix or SuSE 9 with good autodetection. Running Fedora 3, and even with lots of oddball hardware, the only thing that failed to detect properly was my free webcam from Comcast. Lots of other USB webcams, digital cameras, my Epson C66 printer, various pointing devices, DVD+RW drive, USB flash drives, etc., were all automatically detected and installed.
Slashdot Mirror
The Apple II wasn't 'OS-less' by any stretch of the imagination. It used either Apple DOS or Apple ProDOS as its OS, depending upon which machine and applications you were talking about. I don't know much about the architecture of the C64, but I'll bet it was hardly 'OS-less'.
And there were machines prior to Apple and Commodore that used CP/M as their OS.
And there was never any sudden 'jump' from CLI to GUI. The first machine with a GUI was the Xerox Alto. There were several other GUI implementations between the introduction of the Alto in 1973 (2 years before Apple was even a glint in Steve Jobs' eye) and 1984, when Apple introduced the first widely-popular GUI-based computer, the Macintosh. It wouldn't be until the early 90s that Windows would begin displacing DOS. In fact, in 1995 at the time of the introduction of Windows 95, the OS largest installed-base OS in the world was still MS-DOS.
I think you're oversimplifying things greatly.
I don't seem to have a problem when using the 'Print' link...
Other things that Dvorak has 'predicted':
I could go on and on about Dvorak's idiot predictions...but one thing is certain: he's almost never right.
Maybe he's right this time. First time for everything, you know.
The Uncanny Valley is, as noted in the article you've linked to, somehwat controversial. Many argue that Mori has no scientific basis for the Valley.
:)
OTOH, I have personally been disturbed by lifelike mannequins, and well before I ever heard about Mori's research... On the gripping hand, Mori's research involved exactly that -- lifelike mannequins and not real robots. Life-like Mannequins don't move and that's partly what makes them disturbing. If the robot, like this one, moves like a human (at least to some extent) then I think it would probably be less distirubing. Which, somehow, I think I just proved Mori's point using myself as an example...
Apparently if you turn on 'scripting' you get an automatic drop shadow. But it doesn't work, at least on Windows. I'll try it later on Linux.
Furthermore, lots of people have cordless phones and don't have a wired phone as a backup. Cordless phones do not work in the event of a power outage.
Electrical noise can certainly bring down a cordless phone, even the nifty new 5.8GHz ones. Wired phones are definitely less vulnerable to noise, but not completely impervious. High amounts of electrical noise can generate interfernce and affect voice quality and even reliablility -- even on a wired phone. I disagree. Much of the regulatory infrastructure is based around the idea that phones are 'hard-wired' into the PTSN. With VoIP, I can use my phone anywhere in the world that has high-speed Internet access. What happens if I have an outage while I'm on vacation in another state or even another country? Who's responsible? My VoIP provider probably can't be held liable...Its much better than it was, definitely. It's much closer to the functionality of earlier versions of programs like CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator than any of the previous versions. With support for
- layers (very important!)
- manual text kerning
- Put text on path
- flow text into frame
- 'live' gradient editor
- bitmap tracing
- support for union/difference/etc. of objects (already in 0.3x, but added late)
- export support for
.eps and .ps formats
Inkscape is on par with older versions of commercialware, with some support for newer-style features like the live gradient editor.Some features that are still sorely missing (compared to commercialware) are:
- Object/text morphing via 'envelope' and 'perspective' type functions
- support for automatic drop shadowing
- more export filters that just
.eps and .ps. Specifically, support for Windows Metafile (.wmf), Adobe Illustrator 88 (.ai), AutoCAD DXF (.dxf) (for 2D and 3D CAD conversion), HPGL and/or HPGL/2 (for output to plotters)
- ability to import at least
.eps, .ps and .wmf. .dxf and .ai would be nice.
- better clipboard support
... ability to integrate with desktop environments so that SVG objects can be embedded in other applications
with those additions and a few more, Inkscape could be well on its way to being a complete replacement for Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Already as a graphic designer I could probably spend most of my time in Inkscape and only have to bring in commercialware for a few little features.I'm betting Apple has developed its own DRM to protect Mac OS X. They don't want to EFI. The fact that x86 Macs won't have EFI will be a major selling point for Macs ... Apple's goal of making Mac hardware cheap will put them in contention with the likes of HP and Dell and Lenovo. Note that the fact that IBM pulled out of the PC biz at this point isn't a coincidence either.
How? It wasn't the radio stations that were breaking the law, it was Sony. Unfortunately, there's nothing illegal about taking bribes to play songs...only offering bribes to play songs.
Graphics card manufacturers really need to get on the silent PC bandwagon, instead of focusing on how many trillion polys per milli-second they can render. Or, instead of focusing on how many trillion polys per millisecond YOU can render, consider buying a videocard without a fan, rather than one with blazing speed. For instance, the Asus nVIDIA MX4000 supports 8x AGP; it may not be the fastest card, and at $35 street it's not the most expensive either. But it doesn't havea fan.
Or better,
/dev/random $HOME/secret_plans_to_blow_up_parliament.sxw
ln -s
Netcraft confirms, BSD is DYING! fr1st ps0t! Natalie Portman, naked and petrified!
Without ID? My bank won't let me *sneeze* without seeing a driver's license or state ID.
Actually, starting July 11th, they've started releasing nightlies. No guarantees of course...
These things are cool. The have random numbers on them that change once a minute. These are sync'd with software that runs on the banks servers. I've worked with them before for access to VPNs and such. Great tools.
Yeah, that filter'll never figure out where you K1N6 is...
So I'm not sure how easy this 'current SOP' would be given the way you describe it.
Appearing on display: Prison Mess Hall
... "
Voice on device: "This is the Prison Mess Hall, where gansters such as Al Capone and the Birdman ate there meals. The prisoners were served nutritious meals
*popup*
"Speaking of nutritious meals, did you know that McDonald's on Market Street in San Francisco has its Fruit and Walnut Salad on sale for 99 cents? Get your FRUIT BUZZ after you escape from Alcatraz!"
And these are the things that make a good, production-capable operating system. These are the things that keep Unix and Windows fully-entrenched in server rooms and on desktops.
Of course, there are plenty of people with specialized needs out there and those needs might differ from what the mainstream wants. MacOS has always done well in the fields of graphic design and A/V production (as well as being a good general desktop OS). SGI Irix was, at one point, the premier OS for 3D graphics/CGI video production. Linux has always been a great desktop for developers (but has been seeking to become a great mainstream desktop lately, of course). BeOS/Zeta seeks to fill the multimedia production niche.
There will always be niche OSes for niche applications; sometimes the mainstream just doesn't cut it.
That's precisely because the moving van IS the "...most worthless POS vehicle". At Hertz, you can rent a brand new Lincoln Towncar.
But, whoa, did you notice? App-le!!
Goog-le!
Zazz-le!
App-le!
Weird-le.
Gotta buy their hardware to get some of their software, of course.
But look at their annual report. Look at page 29, near the bottom.
Mac sales are about US$4 billion. Now look at net sales of other products underneath that, totally $8 billion. Even if you took out iPods ($1.3 billion) and other equipment (951 million), that stills leaves you with $6 billion. That means that Apple makes about as much on software as it does on hardware -- hardly a company that's betting the farm on Macs.
Or just like they write QuickTime to sell compu....errr...no....
Let's see...let's take a careful look at Apple's Web page, shall we?
I see iTunes 4.9 supports Podcasting...
An ad about Mac OS X 10.4.2...
A link to download some dashboard widgets...
Oh, yeah... a BIG ad about iTMS...
And an ad for the iPod.
What's Apple selling these days? Out of six things highlighted on their web page, only ONE is about hardware.
You gotta click on 'Store' before you see one single piece of hardware (aside from that iPod).
Apple's a software company in drag.
Already been solved. Try a nice, recent Linux distribution like Fedora Core 3/4 or Knoppix or SuSE 9 with good autodetection. Running Fedora 3, and even with lots of oddball hardware, the only thing that failed to detect properly was my free webcam from Comcast. Lots of other USB webcams, digital cameras, my Epson C66 printer, various pointing devices, DVD+RW drive, USB flash drives, etc., were all automatically detected and installed.
We burned out on Slashdot and are now hanging out over here. ;)